FanPulse Week 21: the juiced ball, Mariner fan confidence, and college football polls

The ball is juiced/this we know/for the Triple-A numbers tell us so:

Look, maybe the 32% here are being real cagey about the word “intentionally” up there. Maybe MLB didn’t intend, per se, to have the ball flying all over the place, but they’re certainly not mad about it. One could say they’re even leaning into it, as the MLB official Twitter account tweets out a daily roundup of the homers hit across MLB. But one need only check out JJ Cooper’s feed to get an idea of how much the new ball is affecting things at Triple-A:

JJ has been on this for long enough to be self-conscious about it and YET, journalistic duty and all that:

Poor JJ. I fear this season will break him entirely. I picture him in a home somewhere, wrapped in a duvet, typing “the ball explains it all” over and over again on a typewriter with no paper.

Maybe that’s part of the reason fan confidence continues to hold steady, even as the Major League team dwells on in the cellar of the standings. About the only thing that could shake the confidence of serious M’s fans (like the kind who take time out of their days to answer a FanPulse survey, which by the way you should do, the more voices we have, the better the results represent the fanbase) is seeing the rebuild take a sharp turn south. Having Justus Sheffield squirreled away at Double-A seems a lot more palatable when you realize Triple-A is essentially pitcher punishment right now.

Honestly, aside from the Padres, Orioles, and Astros, we have one of the more boring lines out there. Oh, you’d like an example of another, more peaks-and-valleys fanbase? Let me take a suggestion from the crowd [infinitesimal pause] I think I heard Red Sox? Red Sox?

Whew! That’s a ride. How about an NL one? The staff suggested the Mets and the Phillies; I chose the Phillies because holy spikes and falls:

So, just for perspective, not all fans are gliding along on the placid Lake Loser that we are. I miss winning and being in the conversation, but I don’t miss feeling physically ill every time the Mariners lost and the window inched a little further closed.

If you want to be part of future FanPulse voting, sign up here. And hey, college football fans! SB Nation is now doing a weekly college football Top 25 poll as part of FanPulse, so if you’ve ever dreamed of being part of the AP poll, now’s your chance. Sign up here, and go tell those fools that Washington deserves higher than 13.